It starts out with a conversation that's kind of like a curl of steam. It's low and subtle, snakes and tricks you, until you realize you're talking to a beautiful girl who's laughing with you, suddenly single, and talking to you a certain way for a certain reason.
It takes an hour or two for me to convince myself, after we're off the phone. And maybe it starts with folding clothes on my floor that I think maybe I can wear again, that don't smell too bad, when they end up on my disheveled bedspread instead of back in drawers, or up on hangers. I start to think I can chase her, find her and rewind. There are several moments where I talk myself down, remind myself that I've already tried this and she said no. And there have been several times in the past where I've declared a certain time my last time (on the boat, in the breakroom, in the parking lot) I'd ever try, but I do it again. I promise myself just one more shot and I'm honestly not sure if I plan on stopping after this or if I would do it again and again and again at her mercy. But I throw a few etcetera pieces of clothes on the bed into a pile that is something like an overnight bag. Whether it works or not, it's too late to drive from Stamford to Scranton and back, so I know I'll end up somewhere for the night.
I think about all of this with my hands on autopilot and my eyes out of focus, my lips parted and my head overwhelmed. I'm grateful for the distance between the two cities. It's enough time for it to be a waste of gas if I chicken out and it's enough time to piece together my thoughts.
When I'm on the road and looking at the directions on post-it notes, she becomes a wave. She becomes what keeps crashing into my life and knocking me over, just all of the time, all of the time.
The speedometer reads steady eighty and it's ten over the limit, but it doesn't seem fast enough, and since I'm the only car on the road, it doesn't feel like I'm even going that quickly. For the first few minutes, my thoughts are moving too fast for me to keep up with, and I'm constantly readjusting my ten-and-two on the wheel. With my cruise control on, my feet are busy and tapping out my uneasiness on the floor in front of the pedals, and I can't decide which music fits with the situation. It's either a three-hour drive of top forty pop remediation or soft rock telling me to go get the girl or it's too late or it's meant to be. Either way, I'm too keyed-up to listen to any of it, so all I hear is the pavement under the tires for miles.
Eventually, I can't feel like it's a chase anymore, that it's some big and important sudden whoosh of spontaneity and improvisation because, though it really is all of those things, it's still a nearly three-hour drive. And after ten or fifteen minutes I'm flying down the interstate with occasional strangers around me and their headlights don't care about what I'm doing, so I relax my head against my headrest and start to wonder if I smell like I should. If what I'm wearing is okay, if what I'm doing is anything correct. It all feels too try-hard, and it all feels too hopeful.
With her, I'm always hopeful. She becomes a church, something I need to bow in front of and beg at. She becomes something I need to save me, just a little.
When I reach Scranton, I feel like I could get out of the car and get on my knees, look at the sky and say, "I need this, because I'm done if this doesn't work." When I park at a gas station close to the city limits, and get in line for a soda and chips, I shake it off. It's true, it might be nothing short of repeat devastation if this doesn't work, but I figured I can live through it again if I absolutely have to. I don't want to. God, I don't want to. I bounce on my heels when the next guy moves ahead in line, and I wonder what she's doing. I wonder if she's even thinking about our conversation earlier on the phone, and how easy it was for us to fall back into what we were before I opened my mouth in May and ruined everything. I mean, do people do that? Normally? Can people come back to each other and have conversations like everything that happened never did?
Do all girls mix up 28 Days and 28 Days Later and make me fall in love with them because of it?
I take a deep breath and close my eyes -- it's midnight, after all -- and the cashier clears her throat. I step forward quickly and apologize, but I think all she wants is a cigarette break.
I roll my eyes at myself when I get back into the car, thinking about joking about three kitchens and new apartments and fancier versions of ourselves. Is that we are? Just fancy and far apart instead of impossible? Because I'd rather be fancy and far apart and go find her than have a brick wall between us that works in the warehouse. Two hours and forty-five minutes and two Dunder-Mifflin branches apart seems like a smaller distance than before.
Assuming she wants me. Assuming I would make her happy. I like to think I would. I like to think she'll open her door tonight and she'll say, finally and it'll all work out.
And that's when I realize that I don't even know where she lives. My throat closes up because I've been so spacey that I've assumed she would be living where she used to be. And that's stupid because she told me earlier than she lives in a new apartment. With one kitchen. Oh, come on.
I don't even remember if the spare key to the office is on my key ring, but there's one I don't recognize so I figure I might as well try. I drive through the streets around the business park. I go by her old house with Roy and see his truck in the driveway, and it makes me feel sick, thinking about the past and how close to something else she was. I think maybe I helped her change her mind, and even if she didn't change it for me (to be with me), I'm happy just knowing she's not living there anymore.
I slip into the parking lot and turn off the car. The key that I'm holding could easily be for the office upstairs but it doesn't work for the front door. I bow my head against the glass and close my eyes. By now I'm just tired, and I think, gratefully, that maybe I could drive home and go to sleep and she'd never know I was here, and we could go about our lives. Maybe I can take this as a sign, instead of the chance that she worked late tonight and picked up the phone when I called.
I sit down on the ground in front of the building, the place where we met and where I ruined everything. I bend my knees and hang my arms over them, press my forehead into my sleeve and sigh. I consider it my low, and let it be my rock-bottom. I make myself promise ten times in my head that when I get home I'm going to start acting like anything but this. I'm going to start eating and sleeping right, move on. It's not happening, this thing with me and Pam. It's not taking off and maybe it never was. There are plenty of nice girls who are pretty and charming that live in Connecticut and I just need to put myself out there.
I consider staying in town and seeing my mom and dad in the morning, because I know they'd love it, but my mom told me to gain weight last time she saw me and I've done the opposite unintentionally. Plus, I know she'd sense my unrest.
Pam. She becomes ice in the heat, slipping out of my grasp and being cool and unattainable again. She could easily slip down the sidewalk, become a puddle there I can't hold, and rise in steam from the pavement. It hits me that she's gone this time. That's what she's become.
I drive back in absolute silence. I don't cry or kick anything or turn any angry music on. It's okay that it failed. Because I'm in my twenties, that's it. Someone's going to happen for me, I'll find someone, and if I'm marrying her, I'll love her and she'll be a hundred times what Pam is to me now.
Except it feels like I'm not missing being in love with anyone. I just miss Pam. And I can't imagine wanting anyone besides Pam Beesly.
I promise myself, again, that things are going to change. That I'm smart enough to know this is unhealthy now and I need to figure shit out. I grit my teeth a couple of times because I really wanted this to work. I still do. I feel like I can't give up tonight, so I'll save it for the morning instead. Never mind that I made a six-hour drive, or that I drove past a dozen places that reminded me of her somehow (and unintentionally, I can't help that she's just everywhere in my life), I just miss her. Even if I can't have her and even if she really, really doesn't want me. I just miss her: talking, phone-answering, doodling, giggling Pam Beesly. So bad that I grit my teeth again. Wasn't she amazing?
I'm glad I moved. Not really, but I can say it in my head. I cross the state boarder into Connecticut and promise hard that when I get home, I'll go to bed and spend this last night thinking about how much I wanted it. And then I'll be done and it'll be nowhere but up from there. I fell for her, hard, but people do that without ever getting what they want. Doors close so others can open, etc. That kind of thing.
It feels like forever, and my brain feels weighted with sand and sad thoughts, when I finally get back to the duplex I'm renting. I have to park far away tonight, about a block or so (the disadvantage to no off-street parking) and the walk in the cool air wakes me up and makes me exhausted at the same time. The only thing I want, almost as much as Scranton, is a warm bed and pitch-black.
I kick the hide-a-key rock out of the way from the door and put my hand on the doorknob, and that's when the finality of coming home without her, without even having seen her, hits me. There's a wet burn in my eyes that I pinch away before it can begin. It's the hardest things have ever been, but all I'm going to do is go to bed. I throw my coat in the closet, quickly onto a hanger, when I notice something that makes my heart hurt.
She's right there, curled up on the couch, and I know it's her before I have time to suspect some random stranger or serial killer broke into my house for a nap. She's in her coat with her shoes off, feet tucked under her. Her hair falls in front of her face and her side rises slowly and I wonder what would make me hallucinate, or why life has to be so cruel.
But she's real, and my rational side is completely blown away. I have no idea what to do. I've been impulsive enough tonight and it got me nowhere. There's a brief thought of us passing each other on the interstate, miserable and hopeful, but it promptly disappears when I kneel down in front of her and sit back on my heels.
I watch her sleep, and I don't intend to, but I can't wake her up. I want to, but I don't know how. Because I don't know what I'm about to say to her if she would wake up.
The next act is improv, too, but I do it anyway. It's four in the morning and I lost control a long time ago.
I touch her hair, and then gently brush it away so I can see her face. She looks like I figured she would look like asleep. Pam, simply with her eyes closed, and beautiful. Like, doesn't-have-a-clue beautiful like she always is.
She stirs, so I sit back and frown while she wakes up. I wait for it and try to think of the best thing to say, but she doesn't wake up. I sit and stare at the curls on her shoulder for a moment, the curve of her lips and the angle at her shoulders. I reach my hand out to touch her there but I retreat. I just can't picture what I'd say and I'm thrilled just to have her here, even if I don't know why, and she'll be here in the morning, right?
I stand up as quietly as I can and confidently anticipate her being here when I wake up. We can have breakfast. I can ask her why she's here. What gave away the hide-a-key rock outside. What she wants. For breakfast and, you know, in general.
My knees crack and I make my way to the hallway, but her voice stops me.
"Jim?"
I turn back to her and feel my expression fall. I'm desparate for it. For her. Could I move on, and make another life where it's not all waiting for Pam Beesly and working at Dunder-Mifflin? Yeah, I could. But I just don't want to, so I can't.
"Pam," I say quietly and walk back to where I was. She sits up on the couch slowly as I lower myself to the floor again and we look at each other.
Her hair is flat on one side, and she's busy running her fingers through it, looking at me in the dark, when I raise my eyebrows in question: Is this what I think it is?
She shrugs and itches behind her ear, nods. She nods more, she's nodding yes and blinking and balling her fists in her lap. She looks nervous. She's still nodding when she leans forward and carefully puts her arms around my shoulders, testing my reaction, and softly leans into me from the edge of the couch. I pull my own arms around her, too stunned to wear any kind of expression, really.
She murmurs, "Can I stay?" and I nod and then we both do. I close my eyes and rest my forehead onto her sleeve instead of mine tonight, and rock her gently, barely moving. I'm stunned because we haven't been this far yet. I've kissed her and touched her hips and seen her happy and this is better than all of that. When we both hold tighter and sway some more, she becomes a rock. She becomes bricks and a bridge and a fountain and a fire and a foundation, because she stays and it works and we never leave and it lasts.
----------
Wow, so sad, hardly any time to visit or contribute to this place lately. I think you should leave me lots of lovely notes (or terrible ones, either/or) because I miss all of you.
Disclaimer: Nothing's mine, but shouldn't Steve have an Emmy?
Directions by yanana
